Street Art in Shoreditch

City life is pretty busy. In fact, scratch that, LIFE in general is pretty busy. I know I’m certainly guilty of rushing around so much that I don’t always stop and appreciate my surroundings. Usually because I’m on my way to get a burger or something. As I mentioned in my post about Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, I find street art and graffiti really exciting – particularly the juxtaposition of old buildings and modern-looking artwork. But I think when you get used to an environment, or you’re just heading somewhere with a purpose, it’s easy to not take it all in – always looking ahead, never to the side, above or below. So spending an evening exploring the street art of Shoreditch with Microsoft last week was something I definitely didn’t want to miss out on!

We met at Shoreditch High Street station, where we were presented with our swish Microsoft Lumia phones to try out. The bright (really bright) orange backs of them is definitely a bold statement, but they actually look rather cool – plus it makes it super easy to find your phone in your bag (aka the bane of my life). The weather wasn’t exactly fantastic – but we lifestyle blogger types are definitely troopers, and had an awesome time regardless of a bit of ‘sky water’. As well as learning lots about the street art itself, I also got to catch up with and meet loads of lovely bloggers – and we even had a stop off to refuel at Pizza East!

Leading us around the streets of Shoreditch was our tour guide for the evening Karim, who has a HUGE knowledge about the city’s street art. Some of the main artworks we picked up on included Gary Strange and Lily Lou’s ‘No Good Reason’, which spanned the massive length of a wall with vibrant and bold colour; ROA’s Heron which was absolutely massive, amazingly detailed and plastered on the side of a building wall; and next to that, Martin Ron’s Queen’s Guard doing a handstand. The scale of the pieces, particularly the latter, are absolutely magnificent and I found myself gaping up at them in awe. But some of my favourite pieces were actually ones that weren’t part of the tour and I really enjoyed having a proper look at everything – from the massive standout artworks to the little tiny details plastered around the walls (also bridges, ceilings and doorways).

The Lumia camera was fantastic for capturing the colours of the artwork – I struggled a bit when it got dark, but photographer Phil Hebberd was on hand to teach us how to get the best out of the phone camera. All the images above were taken with the Microsoft Lumia, and as far as phone cameras go, its definitely one of the best I’ve experienced. One of the best tips I picked up from Phil was about adjusting white balance – it makes a huge difference to the brightness of colours in the photos, and is really easy to do with the Lumia’s presets too.

Are you a fan of street art? What do you think to the Lumia camera shots?